To the Sky Kingdom

by Tang Qi

  I suddenly realized that this “immortal prince” referred to me. Useless old me. The Western Sea Emperor was extremely garrulous. He continued to ramble, while De Yong and I regarded each other in silence. De Yong’s young serving girl brought in an embroidered, drum-shaped stool and placed it by De Yong’s bedside so I could sit down to take his pulse. I took hold of De Yong’s wrist, my hand trembling. His pulse was not too weak nor too strong, not too sluggish nor racing, not too light nor too heavy, it was just as Zhe Yan had said: completely normal.

  “What can you tell me about my son’s illness?” the Western Sea Emperor asked, rushing over.

  I forced a smile. “Can you take everybody out of this hall for a while please?”

  I was dismissing this crowd of idlers so that I could perform soul-chasing magic and look for Mo Yuan’s soul. Soul-chasing magic was a delicate procedure, and until you had cultivated enough spiritual energy to rise to a god or goddess rank, no matter how outstanding your immortal powers, you would not be able to chase down a soul. Implementing this magic required a hundred-foot radius of pure and calm energy, which would be disturbed by people standing around.

  De Yong, who had been staring into space since I entered the hall, swept his eyes lightly over me. I gave him a pleasant smile, held my hand out flat, and gave him a karate chop. De Yong opened his eyes wide, swayed from side to side, and fell lopsided across the bed.

  It had been many years since I had practiced soul-chasing magic, but luckily I still remembered the words of the accompanying incantation. I drew some spells out on my hands, and a ball of dazzling white light spread across the hall. This white light tapered into a silver beam, which landed on De Yong’s smooth forehead, where it appeared to vanish. I took a deep breath. My soul dived gingerly out of my body, followed the silver beam of light, and slid slowly inside De Yong’s primordial spirit. This was an extremely meticulous piece of magic, and even a momentary lapse in concentration could cause the soul of the person performing the magic to fuse with the primordial spirit of the person receiving it.

  De Yong’s primordial spirit was flooded with a pure silver light, but because the light was so pure, it felt like being surrounded by darkness. I spent a long time wandering around directionless within his primordial spirit, unable to find the place where Mo Yuan was sleeping. I searched back and forth, back and forth.

  I was just about to retreat and apply another type of soul-chasing magic when I heard some familiar music wafting over. It was calm and melodious, desolate and refined. I could still remember the song from the closing ceremony of Xuan Ming the Winter God’s Taoist assembly when Mo Yuan had played this ancient Buddhist melody on the guqin. My heart gave two hammer-like beats. I focused all my energy and ran in the direction of the music.

  I stumbled on the way, nearly tripping, and the sacred Buddhist melody screeched to a stop. I reached out a trembling hand to touch the thing I had tripped on and found it soft to the touch. I felt a barely perceivable wisp of immortal energy crawling up my finger, winding itself around my hand, getting tangled between my fingers. I could not cry, but I felt the corners of my eyes stinging. My eyes and my head both felt filled with emptiness. The fragile little thing I was touching . . . was Mo Yuan’s soul.

  The twists and turns of time had reduced Mo Yuan’s soul to this. Master Mo Yuan, the Four Seas and Eight Deserts’ one-and-only God of War. Mo Yuan, with his strong fighting soul, now so weak he was dependent on this pathetic wisp of immortal energy to keep him going.

  No wonder De Yong looked nothing like Mo Yuan.

  But it was all going to be fine, because Mo Yuan had finally returned. Zhe Yan had not been lying to me. Mo Yuan, whom I felt closer to than to my own father even, had finally returned.

  I had spent too long in De Yong’s primordial spirit, and it was starting to get choppy and producing waves. It would not be wise to delay for too long. Although I had not been able to see anything through the silvery white emptiness, I had knelt down before Mo Yuan’s soul. With my heart filled with a mix of anxiety and joy, I had bowed down before him twice before following the energy of primal chaos back into the outside world and carefully leaving his body.

  Once I had been released from the soul-chasing magic, De Yong started to wake.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me in surprise. “Why are you crying?” he asked. “Please don’t cry just because you haven’t managed to cure me. If anyone should be crying, it should be me. Please don’t cry on my account. I’ve been this way for so long now, and it doesn’t even bother me much anymore.”

  I touched the white cloth around my eyes, and sure enough my fingers came back wet. The choppiness and the waves in his primordial spirit must have caused tears to drop from my eyes. I cast a spell to dry my dampened white silk cloth. “I’m crying tears of joy,” I said with a sheepish smile.

  He frowned. “There I was thinking how softhearted you were, and feeling sympathy and sadness because of the sorry state of my health. Surely my suffering isn’t making you joyful!”

  “Of course not, of course not,” I hurriedly replied. “The reason I’m happy is because I know a cure.” I patted his shoulder, smoothing out the creases in his gown. “You are not to worry. I am feeling tentatively happy, but I will not feel completely happy until you’re completely better.”

  Zhe Yan was right. If Mo Yuan’s soul was relying on De Yong’s frail body, it would take him at least another six thousand years before he could return to his own immortal body and wake up properly. But if we could borrow the Sky Emperor’s soul-binding lamp, we could use it to piece together all the fragments of his scattered soul and repair it completely. After that, I could transfer to him half of the spiritual energy I had been cultivating over the last one hundred forty thousand years. With these measures, he might actually wake up quite soon.

  In all my years, I had never set eyes on the Sky Clan’s soul-binding lamp, but I had read accounts of it in the classics. According to these records, the soul-binding lamp was created by Father of the Universe during the age of primal chaos and could bind the souls of both immortals and mortals.

  If the soul of an immortal had been fragmented, but the pieces not completely dispersed, all you needed to do was to light the soul-binding lamp and let it burn next to the bed of the person in question for three days, and the scattered bits of soul would come together as new. The lamp was even more effective when it came to mortals. Even if the mortal had turned to dust flying and flames dying, all that was needed was something that had their breath on it, which would be placed on the lamp and left to burn for a while. Once the lamp recognized this mortal’s breath, it would slowly start to absorb every particle of this mortal’s energy within a thousand-mile radius. Once it had absorbed all this mortal’s energy from between the sky and earth, it would start to copy the mortal’s soul, producing an exact replica.

  I cast a spell to put De Yong to sleep and left Fuying Hall, where I discovered the crowd of idlers I had banished earlier lined up anxiously against the wall. I could not see the Western Sea Emperor among them. Before I had to ask anything, a perceptive young palace attendant at the front of the queue leaned over and bowed to me, saying, “An important guest has just arrived. The Water Emperor went to the great hall to greet him. If there is anything I can do, Immortal Prince, no matter how trifling, you only have to say the word and I will do my best to assist you.”

  So the Western Sea Emperor was welcoming another distinguished guest. He must have been feeling extremely honored. Zhe Yan and I were a god and goddess who were renowned for our outstanding glory, and by gracing his Water Crystal Palace with our presence, we had already done a lot to brighten his realm. But having the good fortune of receiving another distinguished guest as well, what were the odds? I imagined that such a coincidence would happen only once in ten thousand years.

  I did not have anything to ask of her. All I wanted to do now was go back to the Ninth Sky to find the Sky Emperor and ask him if I could borrow the s
oul-binding lamp. My current alias did not provide me with a high enough status to just come and go from the Western Sea Water Crystal Palace as I pleased. First, I would have to find the Western Sea Emperor and explain face-to-face that I was leaving. Since these palace attendants had shown themselves to be so helpful, I picked two at random, asking one to lead me to the great hall where the Western Sea Emperor was greeting his guest and the other to stay behind and wait on De Yong.

  There were two long lines of young Western Sea immortals extending out from the entrance to the great hall. They were standing in deference with their heads bowed. I saw their faces and recognized them as the same immortal attendants who had been present when the Western Sea Emperor had greeted Zhe Yan and me earlier.

  From the number of attendants present, I deduced that this new guest was not above Zhe Yan in status, but that his level of office was probably much weightier. I waited anxiously. A moment later two palace attendants came out dressed in garish colors and led me into the great hall.

  The distinguished guest was a man I was still rather annoyed with. Heir to the Sky Throne: Prince Ye Hua.

  He was sitting on a carved red sandalwood chair when I walked in, supporting his chin with his hand. He looked wan and wore a slight frown, his face paper white. He was in the same clothes he had been wearing this morning, his off-duty attire, and just like in Qingqiu, his hair had not been bound, just fastened in a ponytail with a black silk band.

  I looked around the great hall but could not see the Western Sea Emperor. All the things that Ye Hua had said to me earlier as he had been cradling Dumpling flooded back, making my blood boil. I gave an indignant snort, spun on my heels, and started to storm out.

  I had six or seven paces on him, but as I was striding away, I felt some wind blowing behind me, and before I knew it he had grabbed me.

  He grabbed me with an extremely heavy hand. I found it unimaginable that he would have the gall to restrain me like this without a second thought for the one hundred forty thousand years of spiritual cultivation I had so bitterly undertaken to ascend to my goddess rank. He had caught me off guard when he grabbed me, and I stumbled and fell back, landing straight in his arms.

  I had enough immortal energy to bump him three or four paces back, until he was pressed up against the huge crystal pillar in the center of the great hall. He clung to me obstinately, his lips pursed tightly and his eyes like raging dark pools.

  His hands were extremely strong, and I struggled for a long time, unable to break away. I considered using some magic to free myself, but he got me in an armlock and moved up against me, pressing me tightly against the wall.

  My wandering mind was brought right back to my body by a sharp pain in my neck. No! Yes. He was actually biting it. And his teeth were sharp! This position gave him the complete upper hand, and I was powerless to fight back.

  His lips and tongue wandered over my neck, and his breathing became heavier. My heart felt calm, but my body was trembling. I felt overcome by some strange emotions. I was still struggling to free my hands, but not so I could push him away. My hands felt as if they had separated themselves from my control, and all they wanted to do was grab him and hold him tight.

  I heard a voice in my head. It sounded as if it came from thousands of miles away, over mountains and oceans, and was only faintly discernible. “If I had nothing at all, would you still want to be with me?” a man asked. A girl chuckled in response. “What do you actually have, aside from the sword resting in the corner?” she asked. “And all the sword is good for is chopping firewood to roast wild beasts. And yet I’m still here, am I not?”

  These disembodied voices caused chaos in my mind. My body felt as if it had been invaded, from the top of my scalp to the tips of my toes. My heart overflowed with what felt like thousands of years of pent-up desire. This desire kept me locked to the spot, unable to move.

  He used one hand to undo the front of my gown while his hot lips moved across my collarbone and down my chest. There was a deep three-inch knife scar from where I used to feed Mo Yuan my heart blood for all those seventy thousand years.

  His left hand, which was holding both of my hands, stiffened slightly, but gripped me even tighter as he glided his lips around the scar on my chest. I raised my head and gave a muffled moan. I suddenly felt a stabbing pain in the place he was kissing me, which was even more painful than when I used to stab myself there.

  This pain caused me to regain some lucidity. I felt physically drained, and all I wanted to do was slide down the crystal pillar.

  Eventually he released my hands, and I instinctively went to slap him across the face. He intercepted my hand and dragged me back into his arms. His right hand ventured inside the front of my gown, and he pressed it against my chest. His face was still as white as paper, although his eyes were burning brightly.

  “Bai Qian, do I have any place at all in your heart?” he asked.

  He had asked me this same question twice already, but I never knew how to respond. Of course he had a place in my heart, but I was not sure if his understanding of this was the same as mine. Being on my own for the last few days, I had quietly contemplated the place he did hold. I had thought about it for a long time, but it had always ended up giving me a headache.

  The hand he had pressed against my breastbone gradually went from scalding hot to ice-cold, and that burning brightness left his eyes, and they became filled with darkness instead. He took his hand off my chest and said, “You’ve waited such a long time for his return. Now he’s back, of course you cannot give yourself to another. I’ve been deluding myself.”

  I lifted my head sharply and looked at him. “How do you know about Mo Yuan’s return?” I was not sure exactly what he was saying, or how Mo Yuan’s return related to the place he held in my heart.

  He turned and looked toward the outer hall. “Zhe Yan told me the night before we returned to the Sky Palace,” he said flatly. “I bumped into him when I was out looking for you in Qingqiu and we had a chat. I knew you were planning to come to the Sky Palace to borrow the soul-binding lamp so that Mo Yuan could wake up sooner.” He paused before asking, “What will you do once you’ve borrowed the lamp?”

  Zhe Yan seemed to have told him everything. I rested a hand on my forehead and sighed. “I plan to go to the Eastern Sea island of Yingzhou to pick some immortal grass so I can transfer him seventy thousand years of my cultivated spiritual energy. He’ll be able to wake up faster that way.”

  He turned his head sharply, his dark eyes looking even darker against the pale white of his face. He regarded me for a while, before enunciating every word carefully and saying, “You. Are. Crazy!”

  Every immortal’s energy is unique, so when cultivated spiritual energy is transferred between immortals, the accidental transfer of too much could disturb both sets of immortal energy, leading to chaotic cultivating practice and demonic tendencies.

  Immortal grass helped by purifying immortal energy. To transfer seventy thousand years of my own cultivated energy across to Mo Yuan without harming both of us in the process, I would need a small amount of immortal grass. I would extract seventy thousand years of my own cultivated spiritual energy, mix it with immortal grass, and refine it into a pill that I would then give to De Yong. If it all went according to plan, within three months Mo Yuan would wake.

  Because of this function, Father of the Universe used to worry that immortal grass would lead young immortals into bad cultivating practice, and so he destroyed all the immortal grass growing in the Four Seas and Eight Deserts, except for that growing in Yingzhou, which he kept guarded by the four ferocious beasts of Yingzhou.

  When Father of the Universe’s body returned to the primal chaos, these four ferocious beasts took charge of half of Father of the Universe’s godly power, making them even more ferocious. I still remember Father going to Yingzhou to get Mother some immortal grass before she came to Yanhua Cave to transfer half her cultivated spiritual energy across to me. He came back from
the island covered in injuries.

  It was hard to find any immortal in the sky or earth with as much cultivated spiritual energy as Father, but even he had been seriously harmed in his struggle against these beasts. Ye Hua was right: my plan to go there was crazy, and I envisioned that I too would return with serious injuries that would take some time to heal.

  There had been two or three footsteps between us, and as soon as he released me, I leaned against the big pillar without moving. He lifted one hand and managed to keep me trapped against the pillar. All the brightness had left his eyes. He gnashed his teeth and said, “You would even give your life for him?” He was the one keeping me trapped, but from his facial expression, you would think it was the other way around.

  I found it strange what he had said. If I were unable to get the immortal grass from those four ferocious beasts, I would simply turn around and flee: it was not a question of losing my life. If I was unable to get hold of the grass and I had to look after Master’s body for seven or eight thousand more years instead, then that was what I would do.

  But looking at Ye Hua’s pale and solemn face, I suddenly realized the problem. Any serious injury would be on top of the seventy thousand years of cultivated spiritual energy I would have just lost, which would take twenty or thirty thousand years to reestablish.

  Within this time period it would be impossible for me to receive the eighty-one wildfires and nine sky lightning bolts that were a customary and essential part of the Sky Emperor and Empress’s traditional accession to the Sky Throne. I had never heard of a Sky Emperor succeeding to the throne without his empress succeeding with him.